This article, or rather brief blog posting, indicates that America Online has initiated a project to unify instant messaging.

There are quite a few reasons I hold this to be a good thing, but at the top of my list is that we're not going to have to play games with these instant messaging service wars any longer. No more being forced to use Trillian or Adium or Gaim or what have you to be on multiple networks. If I had to guess, we're going to see these companies take a cue from .mac and how it interacts with AIM. Instead of using multiple protocols, we'll see a merged protocol, webcam ready, offline message ready, and so on and so forth. We're going to see a unified service, one giant protocol in which you may use your client of choice. And usernames? Well, usernames show up like e-mail addresses. Just like .mac. You would see username@mac, username@aim, username@yahoo, and every other service that buys into it. You'd be able to choose who you want the account with, but talk to everyone.

And I can believe that this will finally happen. It's something I've wanted for along, long time. The danger I see is folks trying to get their username on every service straight off. That'll produce a massive rush, which could be hard to deal with. That will slow down, though, I'm sure.

This could be the beginning of a good new thing for instant messaging.